Friday Five: IDK, OK? LOL

Friday Five: IDK, OK? LOL

Welcome to the Friday Five blog post! Each week I will choose one topic based on something I either heard or saw that interested me during the week and link to five articles related to that topic. I hope you find them interesting as well!

This week’s Friday Five comes to us again from History.com‘s This Day in History. We say “Ok” multiple times throughout the day without ever thinking about it, and it is hard to imagine the English language without that phrase. So when I saw the headline “1839: OK enters national vernacular” I had to check it out.

I will unashamedly admit that misspelled words – especially purposefully misspelled words – make me insane. So the story behind “OK” was fascinating to me, not the least because I just can’t imagine people using slang in the 1800’s, but also because it is so similar to the texting shortcuts developed by Gen-X, Y, and millenials over the last decade. I guess each generation’s youth isn’t that different after all. I do know that I will never look at “OK” the same again.

And I’m not sure if I can even continue to use it knowing that it began from a purposefully misspelled phrase.

Anyway, it got me thinking about other phrases or idioms that we say all the time and where they actually originated. Here are some links that I found interesting and/or amusing. Knock yourself out!